Reviews by kuvien

When does something become so altered that it ceases to be what it was? At what point does the stretching, warping, expanding, and "destruction" of something change its identity? Is that something for the observer to decide, or is the power to assign identity solely in the hands of the creator? Can a musician so fundamentally recreate a composition, give it the same name, and have it remain that thing?

We’ve got McCoy Tyner as piano player and part composer on this one. That’s the only name I recognize (so far), other than Coltrane himself. I’m not a jazz expert, but damn that first track (side A, 18 minutes) blows away the next two tracks (side B). It’s like night and day. The styles seem so different. That playful almost folkish flute at the beginning? That droning, evocative bass? To my untrained ears, the title track is just so different from the following tracks, which strike me as cooler (in the jazz sense) and smoother, more what I’d expect. I like the unexpected and anything that leans toward the more experimental, so the first track is what clinches this album for me.

This is one of the jazz albums I introduced to my young daughters. They love Oscar Peterson’s Night Train as well as The Sound of Music, so this gem is quite the sweet spot. This probably doesn’t make any sense to jazz aficionados, but it makes sense to me and my daughters.

When you motorboat a jazz goddess and then take a breather before going out back to feed her donkeys.

This is, literally, an unremarkable album for me. It’s one I greatly enjoy, but I have nothing to say about it. It evokes no comment from me. I know that’s a lame excuse, but there it is.

An excellent, classic jazz album, one to please most ears.

I find this chaotic mess of an album to be the perfect companion piece to some kind of physical activity, like cycling or gardening. Not because it gets me moving like, say, a big band jazz album might, but because its attempts at spirituality remind me that I am a hybrid being, and by engaging my physical nature, I am reminded that I am spirit as well.

It's a good thing Alice doesn't compose music the way she writes liner notes, because I've never read a bigger load of hogwash in my life. Quasi-religious bullshit in the extreme. One time I was sitting around with a couple of my friends chatting, one of whom happened to be a Buddhist, and he was answering a life question for me. My other friend broke in and said, "We need to make a random generator of the shit you say: Generate Bullshit Buddhist Response". Buddhist friend got really pissed off. Anyway, so it's good Alice Coltrane's music is better than her dumb-as-shit philosophies. To be honest, I feel like she really captured a sense of transcendence and even perhaps spiritual transmigration in the delightful focus she puts on single instruments amid a chaotic swirl of percussion and accompanying instruments. Sometimes she favors the violin, other times the organ or harp, but whatever the instrument is, it navigates the tempest with admirable serenity. "Hare Krishna" is a gorgeous, flawless track.

We got Pharoah Sanders on the right, Joe Henderson on the left, and Coltrane stuck in the middle with them. I'd say, then, that if there was ever an album in need of headphones, it's this one. What a brilliant way to get the listener involved! Where love, consciousness, and life intersect. Head meets heart on this album. "Turiya" is way more peaceful than I thought a piece about Nirvana would be, but that's just a difference in concepts of what merging with the infinite would be like.

This album is full of traditional folk tunes with unknown songwriters, some of which have updated arrangements, and even an acoustic instrumental Thelonious Monk tune! Graham's guitar work is, of course, exquisite, drawing on blues traditions as far as north Africa, and Collins' voice is... well, it's legendary. Much ink has already been spilled over its stark, unadorned, straight storytelling qualities. This is a lovely album that sits right at the center of the folk revival of the 60s.

Whose music? Is it mine, too? I sure hope so. I want to claim a piece of this wild, manic genius, so full and yet so empty, filling my ears yet leaving my mind empty. Room to experience and explore, unchained. "Free" might be a good word to use here.;)

I just love how the first track lures you in with the enchanting female vocals, only to smack you upside the head with a two-by-four on the second track. I feel like this album is a spiral descent, not a straight drop, further luring you in. The chanted vocals on the title track are haunting and wonderful, with the wild and crazy saxophone painting a backdrop of postmodern chaos. It's hard to flip the record after that one...you just need a break. What this album does best, in my opinion, is work interludes of calm amid the chaos.

Highlighting a reshuffling of artists and sounds at its best--a horn from Sun Ra's Arkestra, future brass of Earth, Wind, and Fire, and guitar work that would later electrify some Miles Davis live albums--this album lays one of the spiritual bedrocks of Afrofuturism, another step along the way to creating the Great Black Music, looking not only forward in time but also delving into the past (and a re-imagining of it). As our European jazz-nerd brethren have already said, this album is an excellent link from the cosmic jazz of the 50s and early 60s and the later funk sounds that would define music out of Chicago.

There is something quite comforting about clarinet-led jazz, and this is no exception. The tones just have an open, inviting feel to them. Looking up the tracklist and breakdown, apparently this album is divided into an opening track, and then the next three tracks are the triple helix, a concerto for clarinet and ensemble. And then there are five more tracks. Eclectic is the best way to describe what's going on here, as the tentet reaches across cultural boundaries for its rhythmic inspirations. It's a playful recording, full of joy, though some might call it borderline pretentious.

It took me a while to get into Cohen because he demands a close listen to his lyrics, but if you give him that time, you’ll not be disappointed. He’s got a lot of raw, confessional—sometimes rather embarrassing to hear—stories, and so many of his songs revolve around how he just can’t get the whole love thing right. Love, for him, is a battlefield.

Nothing really groundbreaking here, but this is a fun little album re-imagining Brazilian MPB tunes as clarinet pieces. Take out all the lyrics and just leave behind the music played on Gonçalves' spirited guitar and Cohen's intimate clarinet.

This is an odd split album for me because although the bands sound similar (Code of Honor is thrashier than Sick Pleasure, though), and though on the surface their messages of destruction might be construed as the same, they are not. Code of Honor's complaint is political, and they argue from the principles of peace and honesty as they crusade against government corruption and lies. Sick Pleasure, however, is more misanthropic and nihilistic, wishing for the destruction of the human race on such a scale that the Earth will have no memory of us. It seems that someone hurt Sick Pleasure personally, whereas for Code of Honor, the message is only political.

Using a mix of original compositions with the reworking of extant songs, this triple duet project aims to celebrate and remember the experience of the female textile workers of Barcelona. As a sign of solidarity, this album features a kind of music making that is supposed to evoke the rhythms and sounds of the factory: looms, threads, machines, all keeping complex time following the numerical patterns detailed in textile design.

Occitan folk is a form of French folk music from the Occitan-language areas of Europe, which are parts of France, Spain, and Italy, a linguistic region pre-dating modern political borders. Though the language is closer to Spanish than French, this folk music is sometimes sung in French, too. Auvergnat folk, for example, is a sub-subgenre of this. This recording is full of ritualistic pagan vocal ejaculations, complete with whoops and moans. Vocal percussion. All entrancing female chanting.

Polyphonic singing with attitude and with an aim to dance, revive, and educate!